Electric fences add spark to bear awareness

By Molly Voeller
Electric fences add spark to bear awareness
Let’s say you’ve just awakened from a restless 6-month nap, you check on the kids and it seems like everyone is really hungry. On your way to the grocery store, you pass a chicken take-out joint and the smell of those fryers is irresistible. With kids in tow, you perambulate into the unattended shop. By all appearances, it seems you may have discovered the proverbial “free-lunch.” Who could say no?
This happens for scores of mamas and papas all over the Kenai Peninsula every spring; Mama and papa bear, that is. And, it’s not just chicken on the menu. Equally delectable items like dog food, honey, fish, livestock feed and a wide variety of human foods and other attractive items draw hungry bears that are just following their previously learned experiences and natural instincts. Bears spend as much as 80 percent of their waking day feeding or foraging for food. When bears are rewarded for their efforts with a fairly easy meal and experience no negative circumstances, they can quickly become habituated (food-conditioned) to that attraction.
Bears can be destructive, and these situations can potentially be dangerous for all involved. For people, chicken coops, beehives, smokehouses and the like can quickly become demolition sites with loss of equipment, money, time and effort. Sometimes, encounters between humans and bears don’t turn out so well for the people. But they never turn out well for the bear. People can be proactive in reducing the potential for these kinds of human/bear encounters in a few important and sensible ways.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service, Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program was reauthorized as part of the nation’s 2008 Farm Bill. WHIP’s cost-share funding assistance is used to improve a wide variety of wildlife habitat conditions, and help reduce negative impacts to wildlife species through working with private landowners on their land. For the 2011 fiscal year, NRCS has developed a new initiative available to landowners only on the Kenai Peninsula. The new project idea seeks to reduce potential up-close-and-personal interactions between people and bears at sites of human-induced bear attractants. Permanent electric bear fencing is a long-proven and accepted technique to exclude bears from areas where they should not seek food or investigate feeding opportunities. Most bears respond positively to their negative experience with electric fences, and learn to avoid similarly appearing areas. After receiving their first shock, many bears appear to sense the electrical charge in the fence lines. When properly designed, even the fences’ visual appearance can remind bears of their previous unpleasant encounter. NRCS, in cooperation with Alaska Department of Fish and Game, will also provide fence designs, site management plans and recommendations for the installation of the fences. Site inventory and assessment is part of the technical assistance landowners will receive, in addition to help with the cost for the purchase and installation of the fence.

Molly Voeller is an 
Alaska Public Affairs Specialist
 with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. To find out more about the program, contact the NRCS Kenai Field Office at 283-8732, the Homer Field Office at 235-8177, or the office of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Kenai at 262-9368.